These City Lights
by Utilitarian
Summary: The Boston skyline has changed since the invasion, and so have the survivors. After thirty days in captivity, Karen finds her imprisonment isn't what she expected, and that the life she lived before the invasion may be the only one she has left.


These City Lights

**A/N**: Details on Skitters, their hold over children, and pretty much everything they do is sparse in the show at the moment, so I'm making up some of the relevant details as they apply to this story when not clear in canon.

Chapter 1

A lot of people lost faith after the invasion. I didn't. Then again, I didn't believe in God even before the Skitters fell out of the sky. Still, it was hard not to feel something when I looked out onto the Boston skyline.

The lights weren't ours anymore. Whatever the Skitters had done before they attacked fried most of the electrical grid, and the city went dark before the first bomb hit. The new lights belonged to them, and though I hated to admit it, they were beautiful. Not like Christmas lights, or fireworks. Those glows were beautiful because they were comforting. The Skitters' lights were beautiful like icicles. They glimmered, but if you stood out and watched long enough, you'd freeze to death.

I always looked forward to it, but I never got to see the lights for long. It was a guilty pleasure—like Ritalin or cigarettes. I passed the only window I'd ever seen in the detention center twice a day; once going to the office, and once returning to my quarters. There were always guards, of course, so I never got a chance to stop, but I stole as long a glance as I could manage every time we walked by. As we passed, I counted to twelve before it was out of sight. Then they ushered me into the office.

I'd been to the office nearly every day since I'd been captured, but this was the first time I'd been there since I'd said anything other than my name and serial number. The serial number had been bullshit. I made it up as something to say other than my name, which was boring me to death by day four. It started with eight numbers, and for kicks I added another number to it every day. The Skitters didn't mind, but by the time I hit thirty-six numbers I'd had enough. I was ready to talk about anything.

There were two beings waiting for me when I walked in. One was a Skitter. The other was an eleven year old girl named Carolyn. She was blonde, with curls streaming down between her shoulder blades, and bangs threatening to cover her blue eyes. She was also harnessed. "Good to see you today, Karen," Carolyn said, pointing to a chair. "Why don't you sit down?"

It was more a command than an offer. One of the two guards that had escorted me in guided me to the seat before returning to its spot by the door. I didn't make him force me into it. "Not a bad place you got here," I said. Even after a month of captivity, I wasn't sure who I was supposed to look at when I spoke. Carolyn sat in a seat across from me, with only a small glass coffee table between us. The Skitter stood in the far corner of the room. I focused on Carolyn. "It's a bit gloomy, though. What, you couldn't get an office with a window?"

Carolyn stared at me, but the Skitter glanced around the room. When it responded, it was Carolyn who spoke. "What would I need a window for?"

"The view?"

This time, Carolyn laughed. "That's not necessary for my task."

I held back a shudder. I had been to the office so many times that I'd forgotten I didn't even know what it was for. "Interrogations?"

Carolyn's head wobbled from side to side. Her curls swept over each shoulder before settling on the left. "Not exactly. I just want to talk, if you can believe that."

"Talk? To your prisoner?"

"Yes."

My laugh was a notch grimmer than Carolyn's. "We call that an interrogation."

"I guess you'll call it what you will," Carolyn said, shrugging, "but my point stands. All I want to do is talk, and seeing as you're no longer constantly repeating that silly pattern of yours, I'm assuming you want to talk as well."

I didn't want to talk—at least not with a Skitter. After a month of solitude, though, I was reaching my breaking point. Even an eleven year old girl with a slug on her back was starting to look like acceptable company. I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually talking to the monster in the corner, but a large part of me wanted to accept the illusion. "Depends on what you want to talk about."

"Actually, I was hoping we could talk about you."

I could feel my brow furrow. I'd expected it to ask me about the 2nd Mass. Tactical information. Something useful. "Me?"

"Yes," Carolyn said. "You."

That didn't seem dangerous. They already had me, and I'd passed the point where I actually believed I was getting out. For a short while, I had dreams of escaping, or of Hal sweeping in for a daring rescue. I'd mostly given up on those. They were filed under 'fantasy' now. "What do you want to know about me for?"

"Those were my orders."

The creature would have fit right in at the church down the street from my old house. "Okay," I said, shaking my head, "but why were you given those orders?"

Once again, Carolyn stared, and I heard a raspy breath from the Skitter. After a few moments of silence, Carolyn brushed some of the hair out of her eyes. I wondered if Carolyn was actually bothered or if the Skitter was just going through the motions. "We want to learn about you. Not you specifically, but how you think. As people."

I looked at the Skitter when I answered. I wanted it to know that I knew who I was really talking to. "Can't you get that from your guinea pig?" I pointed towards Carolyn.

"We can get raw information from our children—" I retched when it said 'our' "—but we can only get data." Carolyn waved, and I brought my attention back to her. "What they _know_. We can't know their experiences, thoughts, or feelings."

"Alright, so your understanding of humanity is limited to what you'd get out of a twelve year old mind?"

"Give or take. Plus what we've observed ourselves before we touched down."

"And now you want to talk to people who aren't harnessed."

"That's right."

"To understand us better."

"Yes."

When I shifted forward in the chair, I heard one of the guards at the door take a step closer. The Skitter in the corner vocalized something, and it backed off. It didn't seem like the guards could understand what we were saying without control of a child. "So let me get this straight. You guys wipe out, like, pretty much all of humanity, and now that we're all dead, you want to know about what we were thinking just before the bombs hit?"

"Not just that, but yeah." She nodded. "We do."

Carolyn's smile was so innocent I almost smiled myself. I would have throttled her if we were in the room alone. "And you don't see that as being a bit fucked up at all?"

"I'm just following my orders."

That was the moment I cracked, and if I could take it all back now, I'm not sure that I would. The world as I'd known it had gone, and the world I'd been a part of after that had ended too. I knew then that the office, the window, and my quarters comprised the only world I had left. It was the world I was going to die in. "I'm sold!" I was laughing harder than I should have been, and the laugh was genuine. It was the first sign that I was in real trouble. "When do we start?"

"We can start now, if you'd like, Karen."

"And what do we start with?"

Carolyn rubbed her chin as if stroking a beard. It didn't suit a girl, let alone one her age, and I wondered where she'd picked up the motion. "Anything about yourself. Whatever you're most comfortable with."

For a few moments I thought over what I actually was comfortable talking about. I wasn't going to tell it about Hal or the 2nd Mass. At least, not by those names, and not while I thought it might be a danger to them. In fact, I couldn't come up with anything I was comfortable talking about with a Skitter until the irony of the situation hit me. "You know, I used to talk to one of you guys before the invasion."

Carolyn dropped her hand from her chin and leaned forward. "You mean what you'd call an alien?"

Pretending to look over my cuticles, I shook my head. "No. What I'd call a shrink."

She looked puzzled, but waved an open hand my way. "Do tell."

So I did.


End file.
